Food book: How to Care for Japanese Kitchen Utensils

Anyone who appreciates Japanese cuisine will also probably love the elegant tableware it’s served on, as well as the extensive range of cookware used to prepare the dishes.

Japanese culinary implements tend to be beautiful as well as practical and some are designed with just one, seemingly frivolous, purpose in mind. I’ll never forget being politely admonished by a waitress at a high-end tempura restaurant in Tokyo when I put a discarded shrimp tail on the incorrect dish. I was told I should put the shrimp tails on “the shrimp tail dish”. Of course ...

Many of us who buy Japanese knives, bento boxes, pottery, lacquerware, ironware and so on don’t know how to properly care for these expensive items. But even some Japanese aren’t sure of how to treat their cookware, author Akiko Hino writes in the preface to How to Care for Japanese Kitchen Utensils.

“In older times, knowing how to care for kitchen utensils was something we were expected to learn from our mothers and grandmothers. These days it is harder to pass on this kind of everyday knowledge to younger generations. I also was not taught much by my mother about how to look after kitchen utensils, but have been fortunate to learn from excellent teachers – the makers of kitchenware. When doing some research on the information I gathered from the makers I visited, I was surprised to find that many of the things they told me were supported by theoretical chemistry. It seems that ‘to know its material’ is the key to mastering the tool. ‘Taking care of tools’ is sometimes understood to mean ‘keeping them neat and clean’. However, I have often heard the makers say, ‘You will spoil the charm of your well-used tool if you bring it back to brand new condition.’

“The texture and char­acter of the tool develops as we use it over time. The true attraction of well-used tools lies in those added qualities as well as their practicality. Your kitchen utensils can continue to improve and become better than when you first used them.”